Freeing the voices in my head

…Nope, that isn’t a typo in the title. Writers want their readers to enter their worlds with awareness and be lost in what we’ve created. Long ago, someone (I think it was my older sister) sneered at my stories and declared, “Fiction is lies.” WHAT? Non-fiction or fiction, real or imagined, stories and books are actually more truthful than our daily interactions with each other. We all lie, all the time. (If you insist you always tell the truth, well, I’ll think you’re lying!) We need to feel safe among our peers and the truth is never safe. The only way to safely tell the truth is to write it.

If you want to know my truth, if you want to know ME, you’ll find it in my writings. I’ve tried to be a nice person, kind, courteous, polite. Such manners have little to do with Truth. I grew up in a family fraught with secrets and lies. If I told the truth, I was slapped around for it, told to shut up, told I was lying. I learned early on that while lies – if uncovered – were met with disapproval, or, even better, ignored, telling the truth brought anger, hate and pain. If I couldn’t lie my way to safety, I ran and hid. Closets, under the cellar stairs, on the roof of the garage, in the top of the apple tree across the street, and, rarely, to a friend’s house.

After I graduated from high school and escaped, it became easier to tell the truth. Among my friends, I didn’t need to lie. If I fell back into it, they often knew it and would call me out. Most enlightening of all to me was that out in the world, no one beat on me for telling the truth! But still, something had been broken, a trust betrayed, and I’m still mending it every day.

That’s the reason for the title of this blog. I promised myself I would tell the truth in my writings. Essay, story, non-fiction and fiction – the words would be clean and pure, from the heart, my heart, that tattered, shattered pulse I’ve stitched together with the help of friends, husband and children. No more hiding. When you read my writings, you are seeing me – in every character, good and bad, there I am, exposed and naked and hoping you’ll like it. But, first and foremost, a writer writes for herself. If I can’t be honest with me in my writings, then I’ve let us all down.

So, be aware, dear reader, what I write isn’t always pleasant or funny, and is definitely NOT politically correct (Now there’s a HUGE lie if I ever heard one!). You might love it, like it, be offended or angry, but at least I touched you in some way. You’re in MY world now and I’m gonna play with every emotion, show you every facet of my universe, of me – because that’s a writer’s goal: To drag you in and make you LIVE here, and, hopefully, in the end, leave you screaming for MORE!

(There now, I think these intro/teaser blogs have helped me settle in. Story time is coming soon!)